There is a Crack in Everything

Good morning Vietnam, I was perusing some of these here recent posts on the Pat is Crazy interweb site and a post about the Daily Kos by Oakland, our resident Cultural Critic and Vinyl Vault Reviewer, has provoked me to write a bit more on the topic.  There is actually a connection to the P.I.C. logo up there at the top of your screen: notice the Howard Dean sign being held.  Daily Kos was a platform used early on in the Dean campaign - one which I frequently read. 

Now, Daily Kos was one of the early blogs, back when they were cool and talked about by the hip folk - before blog was a word in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  It was back when people didn't have a twitter or a facebook profile, or instagram or whatever the kids use today.  There was still a good number of people who relied on dial-up connections and the NSA probably only tracked and stored most of what you read and watched on the world wide web.  It was wild era.

I was living in the town of Peculiar, Missouri ("Where the Odds are with you") back in those days, organizing my peers against the war and soon there after to support the candidacy of a Doctor from Vermont named Howard Dean.  It was 2003 and this Dean dude was talking about some pretty rad things, you know?  Like, why are all these Democrats supporting the policies of George W. Bush (remember that guy?), why are they supporting a war of aggression in the Middle East, tax cuts designed for the wealthiest elite of the ruling class?  Why are these Democrats supporting anti-gay marriage amendments?  He was saying the Democratic leadership was corrupt.


The media of course didn't pay any attention at first.  I mean, he was a Governor of a small state with a population of 600,000 or so.  Dean wasn't part of the Washington establishment, the incestuous family of media, government officials, and lobbyists.  Establishment "professional" media doesn't report on issues, only the poll numbers, the gaffes, the horse race.  Dean was at 2-3% in the polls, he had no chance at the White House.

But then these blog things took off.  Daily Kos was one of the prime places that fermented Dean's campaign.  People shared information about the Governor and his critique of the war and those of his own party in Congress.  Markos Moulitsas, and others who posted on the site, railed on those corporate establishment Democrats, the Bill & Hillary Clintons, Joe Bidens, and John Kerrys of the world.  Democrats of the Democratic wing of the party started to get excited about actually beating Bush in 2004.  And Dean raised money online.  By regular people.  Contributions to the Dean campaign averaging $20-30 a donation.

For a brief time, Dean became the frontrunner.  Then Dick Gephardt, the former leader of the House Democrats and big Iraq War supporter, essentially kamikazed Dean in Iowa - spending all his campaign dollars on attack ads in a hope that Kerry would select him as VP in gratitude.  The media harped on "gaffes", one such was Dean saying in a debate that it would be smart policy for the United States to prepare for the day when it was no longer the only global power in the world.  By the time of the infamous "Heeeeeyaaa" Scream speech, the campaign was already over.

Today we live in a different time.  Daily Kos's purpose was at reforming the Democratic Party, but now in the days of Obama, and the coming candidacy of Hillary Clinton, what hope is there left?  In the Bush era, progressive Democrats could at least dream of change coming through the political process.  For many, after Dean's loss (or maybe for younger people who put their faith in the empty rhetoric of Barack Obama and have seen what has resulted), the idea the Democratic Party could become a progressive vehicle for change ended.

Howard Dean is just a person - just like Obama - and the point is it is dangerous to focus our energies on supporting personalities in political races.  Dean is a fairly moderate politician, who you know, after these 10 years, I can't say if I would vote for if he were running again.  But he was some thing a bit outside of the Washington culture.  He was, at least from my eyeballs, somewhat serious about getting the Democratic Party to be more in line with the interests of the American people.  His campaign was not primarily funded by corporate donors - small contributions fueled his campaign.  He may have been the last opportunity for America to not completely descend into fascism.

But enough of what may have been, what can those fighting the good fight look towards today?  We have a few heroes again who may actually deserve to be called such.  Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are inspiring millions around the world to stand up for what is right, no matter the power of the forces against you. 

In media, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald is showing journalists how to report with courage.

Culturally, my stomach lining can't take much more for me to look at it, but a few are breaking the sound barriers.  Russell Brand comes to mind.

Socially conscience young people are less likely to take part in the two party dictatorship, and young people of all sort have a more positive view of socialism than capitalism.  Radical publications like Jacobin, which despite having a touch of Brooklyn pretentiousness still hit a lot of the right keys, are being read instead of blogs like Daily Kos.  Young feminists are realizing that websites like Jezebel are terrible and are standing up against the "Lean In" folk who are attempting to prevent our collective liberation.

Even with those like Obama attempting to sanitize the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, more again are turning on to the message of Dr. King.

Yes, overall things are still quite awful.  Sequestration - what a fancy word! - is devastating the most vulnerable in our population.  The sequester process is a convenient way for Democrats to continue cutting social services, and then go back to the public and say, "Oh, gee whiz, the Republicans just won't compromise.  Not our fault."

As sequester cuts continue, the more bureaucratic the system becomes - less resources, more work for people in the non-profit and service provider field.  More time spent on paperwork than providing services, more time spent with bureaucratic hassles than finding comprehensive solutions.  More energy spent juking the stats to show you have the data to justify your organization's funding from shrinking sources available.

The people I have spent the majority of my time with, and have been a part of, the past three years are the ones who are not just having to tighten their belts (if we had them), they will and are dying as a result of these cuts.  More people will die in America as a result of cuts to vital services from the sequester than those alleged killed by Assad in that chemical attack.

And the resources to provide a basic safety net certainly are there.  The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record-breaking $1.7 trillion – more than 5 times what they were worth two decades ago.  The Walton family of Wal-Mart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.
 
When the elites make it impossible for even moderate voices like Howard Dean to have a voice at the table, sites like Daily Kos, which remains committed to working within the Democratic Party, become stagnate and people start to look for alternative sources and solutions.  While I appreciate what that website represented 10 years ago, I rarely visit Daily Kos these days.